2 break days later, I took the quarter-pill at 11:22 PM. I had discovered I had for years physically possessed a very long interview not available online, and transcribing that seemed like a good way to use up a few hours. I did some reading, some Mnemosyne, and started it around midnight, finishing around 2:30 AM. There seemed a mental dip around 30 minutes after the armodafinil, but then things really picked up and I made very good progress transcribing the final draft of 9000 words in that period. (In comparison, The Conscience of the Otaking parts 2 & 4 were much easier to read than the tiny font of the RahXephon booklet, took perhaps 3 hours, and totaled only 6500 words. The nicotine is probably also to thank.) By 3:40 AM, my writing seems to be clumsier and my mind fogged. Began DNB at 3:50: 61/53/44. Went to bed at 4:05, fell asleep in 16 minutes, slept for 3:56. Waking up was easier and I felt better, so the extra hour seemed to help.
A protein source linked to a great brain boost is fish -- rich in omega-3 fatty acids that are key for brain health. These healthy fats have amazing brain power: A diet with higher levels of them has been linked to lower dementia and stroke risks and slower mental decline; plus, they may play a vital role in enhancing memory, especially as we get older.
The best of the old world combined with the science of the new. Huntington Labs offers a Focus, Memory and Clarity supplement that delivers a targeted and specifically stacked combination of nootropics, or “brain enhancers.” Specially chosen extracts, herbs and substances work together to boost attention, creativity, flexibility, focus, speed, memory and clarity. Green Tea Extract: Traditional supplement for mental performance. Promotes better brain function naturally. Huperzine A: Boosts alertness and enhances memory; extracted from Fir moss. Bacopa Monniera: Contains Bacosides which improve cognitive function and memory. L-Glutamine: An essential amino acid that builds protein and aids memory. Huntington Labs pays special attention to the “stacking” benefits of all of these natural nootropic brain boosters, and hopes that you will experience the max benefits from your daily recommended dose. We guarantee it or your money back!
Evidence in support of the neuroprotective effects of flavonoids has increased significantly in recent years, although to date much of this evidence has emerged from animal rather than human studies. Nonetheless, with a view to making recommendations for future good practice, we review 15 existing human dietary intervention studies that have examined the effects of particular types of flavonoid on cognitive performance. The studies employed a total of 55 different cognitive tests covering a broad range of cognitive domains. Most studies incorporated at least one measure of executive function/working memory, with nine reporting significant improvements in performance as a function of flavonoid supplementation compared to a control group. However, some domains were overlooked completely (e.g. implicit memory, prospective memory), and for the most part there was little consistency in terms of the particular cognitive tests used making across study comparisons difficult. Furthermore, there was some confusion concerning what aspects of cognitive function particular tests were actually measuring. Overall, while initial results are encouraging, future studies need to pay careful attention when selecting cognitive measures, especially in terms of ensuring that tasks are actually sensitive enough to detect treatment effects.
If you are a slow caffeine metabolizer and consume too much caffeine, you run the risk of mild to severe complications, such as cardiovascular disease. There’s also the sleep disruption problem of having too much caffeine left in your bloodstream late in the day as a result of a longer caffeine half-life, a problem not faced by fast caffeine metabolizers (it’s so unfair if you love your cup of joe, right?). In addition, fast caffeine metabolizers actually run a reduced risk of cardiovascular complications if they consume at least one cup of coffee per day. While anyone can be a slow caffeine metabolizer, there are certain ethnic backgrounds that are indeed associated with slower and faster caffeine metabolisms. For example, it’s known that people with Asian and African ethnic backgrounds generally have slower rates of caffeine metabolism. To find out if you’re a fast or slow caffeine metabolizer, you can have a relatively inexpensive salivary genetic test performed by a company like 23andme and then use the online dashboard to jump straight to your CYP1A2 gene. When you’re there, you type into the search bar “rs762551”. If your rs762551 SNP variant is AA, then you’re a fast caffeine metabolizer, but if your variant is AC or CC, you’re a slow caffeine metabolizer. Fortunately, many genetic testing companies will now simply report directly on your results whether you’re a slow or fast metabolizer, without you needing to go through the SNP searching trouble.

This research is in contrast to the other substances I like, such as piracetam or fish oil. I knew about withdrawal of course, but it was not so bad when I was drinking only tea. And the side-effects like jitteriness are worse on caffeine without tea; I chalk this up to the lack of theanine. (My later experiences with theanine seems to confirm this.) These negative effects mean that caffeine doesn’t satisfy the strictest definition of nootropic (having no negative effects), but is merely a cognitive enhancer (with both benefits & costs). One might wonder why I use caffeine anyway if I am so concerned with mental ability.

Vitamin D is probably the most important supplement you can take, and one of the best brain food. It acts on more than over 1,000 different genes and is a substrate for testosterone, progesterone, estradiol, and other hormones.[1] It also influences inflammation and brain calcium absorption.[2] No surprise that optimal vitamin D levels are linked to stronger cognitive function and slower brain aging.[3][4]
People with failing memory and worried about Alzheimer’s disease are sometimes seduced by advertisements for Huperzine A, extracted from a type of moss. Some studies have shown that it increases levels of acetylcholine in the brain, a chemical that is in short supply in Alzheimer’s. But despite increasing acetylcholine, aside from a few questionable studies in China, there is no evidence that it improves memory. Unfortunately when it comes to memory pills, they are best forgotten. There is, however, hope that a nasal spray containing insulin can increase the absorption of glucose into brain cells and improve cognitive function. But in the meantime, the best bet to maintain good brain function is to monitor blood glucose and blood pressure, eat a diet rich in fruits, vegetables and whole grains, and low in simple carbs and saturated fat. And don’t forget that physical exercise also exercises your brain.
It would be like saying: 'No, you can't use a cell phone. It might increase productivity!'" If we eventually decide that neuroenhancers work, and are basically safe, will we one day enforce their use? Lawmakers might compel certain workers - A&E doctors, air-traffic controllers - to take them. (Indeed, the US Air Force already makes modafinil available to pilots embarking on long missions.) For the rest of us, the pressure will be subtler - that queasy feeling I get when I remember that my younger colleague is taking Provigil to meet deadlines. All this may be leading to a kind of society I'm not sure I want to live in: a society where we're even more overworked and driven by technology than we already are, and where we have to take drugs to keep up; a society where we give children academic steroids along with their daily vitamins.
We recently held an informative event in London with Dr Gill Hart, a biochemist and expert in the field of food intolerances and their global effect on health and we wanted to share some of the highlights of what Dr Hart covered. Based on some of her recent research (1), the talk offered some interesting insights into how food intolerances may have a role to play in our mental health. It honed in on the differences between food allergies and food intolerances within our immune system; some of the ways that our immune system, gut and brain are believed to influence each other, and how food intolerances, therefore, can play a role in mental health symptoms. She also spoke about how to go about testing and managing these intolerances through elimination diet strategies.
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As it happened, Health Supplement Wholesalers (since renamed Powder City) offered me a sample of their products, including their 5g Noopept powder ($13). I’d never used HSW before & they had some issues in the past; but I haven’t seen any recent complaints, so I was willing to try them. My 5g from batch #130830 arrived quickly (photos: packaging, powder contents). I tried some (tastes just slightly unpleasant, like an ultra-weak piracetam), and I set about capping the fluffy white flour-like powder with the hilariously tiny scoop they provide.

New psychiatric drugs have a way of creating markets for themselves. Disorders often become widely diagnosed after drugs come along that can alter a set of suboptimal behaviours. In this way Ritalin and Adderall helped make ADHD a household name, and advertisements for antidepressants have helped define shyness as a malady. If there's a pill that can clear up the wavering focus of sleep-deprived youth or mitigate the tip-of-the-tongue experience of middle age, then those rather ordinary states may come to be seen as syndromes.
The principal metric would be mood, however defined. Zeo’s web interface & data export includes a field for Day Feel, which is a rating 1-5 of general mood & quality of day. I can record a similar metric at the end of each day. 1-5 might be a little crude even with a year of data, so a more sophisticated measure might be in order. The first mood study is paywalled so I’m not sure what they used, but Shiotsuki 2008 used State-Trait of Anxiety Inventory (STAI) and Profiles of Mood States Test (POMS). The full POMS sounds too long to use daily, but the Brief POMS might work. In the original 1987 paper A brief POMS measure of distress for cancer patients, patients answering this questionnaire had a mean total mean of 10.43 (standard deviation 8.87). Is this the best way to measure mood? I’ve asked Seth Roberts; he suggested using a 0-100 scale, but personally, there’s no way I can assess my mood on 0-100. My mood is sufficiently stable (to me) that 0-5 is asking a bit much, even.
Nor am I sure how important the results are - partway through, I haven’t noticed anything bad, at least, from taking Noopept. And any effect is going to be subtle: people seem to think that 10mg is too small for an ingested rather than sublingual dose and I should be taking twice as much, and Noopept’s claimed to be a chronic gradual sort of thing, with less of an acute effect. If the effect size is positive, regardless of statistical-significance, I’ll probably think about doing a bigger real self-experiment (more days blocked into weeks or months & 20mg dose)
“Over the years, I have learned so much from the work of Dr. Mosconi, whose accomplished credentials spanning both neuroscience and nutrition are wholly unique. This book represents the first time her studies on the interaction between food and long-term cognitive function reach a general audience. Dr. Mosconi always makes the point that we would eat differently and treat our brains better if only we could see what we are doing to them. From the lab to the kitchen, this is extremely valuable and urgent advice, complete with recommendations that any one of us can take.”

In my SkepDoc column in Skeptic magazine (text available online) I reviewed the video series “Awakening from Alzheimer’s,” in which a journalist interviews numerous “experts” and claims that Alzheimer’s is for the most part preventable and can be reversed in 9 out of 10 patients! The recommendations of those “experts” are all over the map. There is nothing even remotely approaching a scientific consensus. They claim the main cause of Alzheimer’s is everything from gluten to obesity to lack of sleep to chronic Lyme disease to toxins spewed by “leaky gut” syndrome. They claim to have reversed Alzheimer’s with a wide variety of treatments: everything from coconut oil to a ketogenic diet to probiotics to strenuous exercise to various long lists of dietary supplements to psychological interventions that are considered successful if they make patients cry. There is no satisfactory evidence to support any of their claims.

Some nootropics users are hopeful that the drugs could be permanently “neuroprotective”—in other words, that the compounds could slow down the neuronal aging process, and help avoid cognitive deterioration later in life. (For what it's worth, most of the users I spoke to said that didn't matter much to them. “I doubt anything I’ve tried has made me smarter in a long-term way,” Baker says. “That’s still science fiction.”)

Drugs such as Adderall can cause nervousness, headaches, sleeplessness and decreased appetite, among other side-effects. An FDA warning on Adderall's label notes that "amphetamines have a high potential for abuse" and can lead to dependence. (The label also mentions that adults using Adderall have reported serious cardiac problems, though the role of the drug in those cases is unknown.) Yet college students tend to consider Adderall and Ritalin as benign, in part because they are likely to know peers who have taken the drugs since childhood for ADHD. Indeed, McCabe reports, most students who use stimulants for cognitive enhancement obtain them from an acquaintance with a prescription. Usually the pills are given away, but some students sell them.

Celastrus paniculatus, also known as the Intellect Tree, is perhaps one of the more interesting Ayurvedic medicinal plants that has been used for thousands of years, and one that I personally use quite frequently as part of the supplement “Qualia Mind”. In the Ayurvedic tradition, oil derived from C. paniculatus (Malkanguni oil) is used to enhance memory and intellectual capacity, as well as to improve dream recall and induce lucid dreams. In a study performed on healthy rats, the oil was shown to improve 24-hour memory retention after a single dose, an effect accompanied by a reduction in monoamines like norepinephrine, dopamine and serotonin, indicating a decreased turnover of these neurotransmitters which, in turn, may aid in reducing conditions like depression. In another study with rats, C. paniculatus oil administered for 14 days reversed stress-induced spatial learning and memory impairment and restored working memory. In mice with scopolamine-induced memory deficits, the oil has been shown to improve both spatial and fear memory (a type of fear conditioning through which an organism learns to avoid detrimental situations or events). Traditionally, is taken in seed form, starting with 10 seeds and working up to 15 and finally 20 seeds.
Alex was eager to dispel the notion that students who took Adderall were "academic automatons who are using it in order to be first in their class". In fact, he said, "it's often people" - mainly guys - "who are looking in some way to compensate for activities that are detrimental to their performance". He explained, "At Harvard, at the most basic level, they aim to do better than they would have otherwise. Everyone is aware that if you were up at 3am writing this paper it isn't going to be as good as it could have been. The fact that you were partying all weekend, or spent the last week being high, watching Lost - that's going to take a toll."

Because smart drugs like modafinil, nicotine, and Adderall come with drawbacks, I developed my own line of nootropics, including Forbose and SmartMode, that’s safe, widely available, and doesn’t require a prescription. Forskolin, found in Forbose, has been a part of Indian Ayurvedic medicine for thousands of years. In addition to being fun to say, forskolin increases cyclic adenosine monophosphate (cAMP), a molecule essential to learning and memory formation. [8]

She reveals where she went astray. In a lecture she gave, she lamented the failure of science to offer a cure for Alzheimer’s or even an effective treatment. Someone in the audience asked, “How about olive oil?” She realized she didn’t know anything about the effects of nutrition on Alzheimer’s. She seems to have assumed that diet must be crucially important, and for some reason instead of studying conventional nutrition science, she got a degree in Holistic Nutrition. She bills herself as a certified Integrative Nutritionist and holistic healthcare practitioner. I couldn’t find where she studied, but Stephen Barrett has criticized the Institute for Integrative Nutrition on Quackwatch. Its training is not based on scientific nutrition. It seems most programs in Integrative Nutrition are 6- to 8-month correspondence courses with no prerequisites. I wonder what she was taught.

Eugeroics (armodafinil and modafinil) – are classified as "wakefulness promoting" agents; modafinil increased alertness, particularly in sleep deprived individuals, and was noted to facilitate reasoning and problem solving in non-ADHD youth.[23] In a systematic review of small, preliminary studies where the effects of modafinil were examined, when simple psychometric assessments were considered, modafinil intake appeared to enhance executive function.[27] Modafinil does not produce improvements in mood or motivation in sleep deprived or non-sleep deprived individuals.[28]